Next!

Our security awareness topic for June will be IoT and IIoT security. 'Securing things' is the working title of the module, for now.

Our first order of business is to set up a working directory in which to accumulate the materials as they are drafted, and think up some poster designs. The graphics team has a lead-time of about 3 weeks so we have a few days' creative thinking time.

The posters need to support the other awareness materials which aren't written yet and are barely imagined at this point ... so designing the posters this early in the month is a challenge that forces us to consider the scope and purpose of the module, including the main messages we'll be expressing. It's a useful discipline to clear our heads of the previous topic and retune to the next one. 

Thankfully we have covered IoT security before so we're not starting completely from scratch. The awareness materials written in 2015 are a source of inspiration and possibly some useful content, depending on how much things have moved on in IoT security over the past couple of years, and what angles we decide to cover this time. I'm interested to find out what's going on in the area of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), including security aspects such as integrity and resilience. Based on what I've been reading over the past couple of months, IoT security in general is no better today than it was two years ago but we'll see how it turns out.

A recent privacy complaint concerning Bose wireless headphones seems likely to feature in the module: maybe something along the lines of 'headphones with eyes' or 'headphones peeking round a corner at someone' would work as a poster? We'd need to come up with a few words to complement the image, and think up at least 5 more designs. More coffee required.

Today is a lovely Autumnal day here in NZ with clear blue skies and bright sunshine but thanks to a cold Southerly from Antarctica it's just 6C outside. Time to layer-up and get busy with the chainsaw. We are still clearing trees felled by the cyclone that smashed into us in mid-April. Nothing better for clearing one's head!